


Dance With The Devil On Your Back

by Measured



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/F, Game Spoilers, Hurt/Comfort, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 03:45:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Measured/pseuds/Measured
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Homura falls into a labyrinth of mirrors and despair, with only the memory of Madoka to guide her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dance With The Devil On Your Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ErinPtah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErinPtah/gifts).



> Or Puella Magi Madoka Magica meets a vague rendition of The Divine Comedy with extra trippiness. Definite PSP game spoilers, though any similarities to Rebellion are unintentional and deeply AU from both that and the end of the series.
> 
> Title comes from "Shake It Out" by Florence + The Machine.
> 
> Thanks to Multiversecafe for the beta.

_  
And the only solution was to stand and fight  
And my body was bruised and I was set alight  
But you came over me like some holy rite  
And although I was burning, you're the only light  
Only if for a night_  
Only If For A Night, Florence + The Machine 

 

She'd left the city long before dark on the hunt, but the wraith had led her deeper and deeper into the forests, until even the path back was obscured. Shadows danced above her in between the branches of the trees. Homura held her bow at ready. She'd tied a rose to her bow to remind her, the petals faintly pink in the twilight.

"Come on," she said.

The wraith rose above her, black claws and burning eyes. Its body turned to smoke, and filled the area before she could even fire off a shot. The touch seared her skin only a moment before she wrested free the handgun from the holster at her thigh. She fired straight into the gaping maw of its mouth, but it still advanced. She kept firing until the final click signaled the clip was empty. Smoke curled and returned as the wraith reassembled itself.

The wraith shifted shapes, until it was shaped like a wolf, which bore down on her with glowing golden eyes. She lifted up her bow aimed straight between its eyes. The air soared through the air, only to sail straight through it. The wraith shook its large, black head. There were no wounds, no blood, nothing to show she'd even made a scratch.

The wraith sprinted towards her, faster than any witch she'd dealt with. Time stopped as she pulled out a grenade. She bit the pin and tossed it, releasing time just as it exploded. Her vision was nothing but red and orange flames and the sulfur scent of the fallen creature.

The black fog dissipated for a moment, lost in the fire, but she saw the eyes. Spread out wide, the wraith had only grown larger. She gripped her gun, but was thrown backwards as the wraith leapt, faster than before. Claws dug into her shoulder, filling her with an unspeakable cold. The jaws opened so wide that they disappeared into the body, until it was a blanket of freezing smoke covering her. She kicked at the wraith, each contact sending the cold agony straight through her.

Smoke swirled about her head as the jaws opened around her. The wraith had covered her completely, like she was drowning in a sub-arctic waters. The creature let out a long scream that made the trees above shudder. Her ribbon glowed with faint heat. Homura pushed at the wraith, a swift kick to its torso, and this time, it hit true, and was enough to free herself. The wraith began to dissolve, pink light shining out through the darkness until only ashes lay on the ground.

"Madoka.... you saved me again."

She took the ribbon off her head and laid it in her hand. Nothing of the dark had tainted her ribbon, the last remnant from her most important person.

The wraiths were getting stronger. Had Madoka's wish truly been for nothing? Her friends would fall one by one, perhaps even humanity with them. Witches may have been erased from existence, but that didn't stop something even more powerful from taking their place.

She held the ribbon in her hand tight enough to make her hand tremble. Guns lay on the ground, empty of bullets, useless against foes like this. She'd felt hope for a fleeting moment, but then Madoka had gone. The feeling of the ribbon tied about her wrist when she slept, put through her hair as a amulet when she fought wraiths.

The too-sweet flower scent of Madoka's perfume had faded. Memories had begun to blur until she couldn't quite tell the timelines apart. It wasn't a comfort, if anything she clung to the details. The time when Madoka had given her the last grief seed, together in the water with that last brush of heat and skin before Madoka turned to a witch, the time she'd failed and Madoka had destroyed the system.

The time back when she used to believe. The moment when she started to again, only for the world to wind back in. Even in a world without witches, the wraiths always lay in wait, until they were almost indiscernible from the witches. She had fought for what seemed like years, half her life caught suspended in a month of Madokas. 

The world went on without Madoka, as if she were nothing. Someone else took her seat. At times, she could swear in the sunrise, a pink reflection of on the windows, she saw her. But it never was anything but a slight of the mind. Pure wishful thinking.

She caught sight of another wraith, and saw her own face reflected. The forest shattered, and Homura fell into the gaping abyss, as the world around her collapsed and reformed beneath her. Stone and fire, each mirror turned smokey and she saw surreal visions through each one. Millions of paths she could've taken, girls she could've been. Herself in yellow, head floating from the neck and hands stretched out. Herself in blue, drowning beneath the sea, a melody never heard, herself in red surrounded by red spears of flames. 

Each possible her was snuffed out. Drowning, burnt, cut to bloody pieces, decapitated, wished away to nothing. She fell through another layer, this one filled with pink, wriggling snakes covered in polka dots. The head lifted, and she saw Charlotte split off into sections, ribbon snakes with gaping jaws dripping with rotted sugar. Charlotte caught sight of her and dove down her way. She reached for her weapons, time slowing as the jaws of the dessert witch snapped shut inches above her.

She burst through the next layer. The many Charlottes slammed themselves against the clear, glasslike wall, but none of them could fit through the clear veil.

Through the walls of this new layer, Homura saw herself pushing stones endlessly up a green hill. Glasses broken, braids unraveling. The stone was an orb of rose quartz, and within it, Homura could see two girls reaching for each other, never to touch. 

She fell faster, until Homura finally landed in a gray wasteland where a river cut through. There were the remnants of buildings; the war zone of Walpurgis Nacht. Broken toys and charred, waterlogged beds from the witch she'd failed against so many times.

She pushed herself up, and brushed off her knees. She drew out a handgun and started to walk. The ash and gravel crunched underneath her. Her foot brushed against something, and she drew back. A doll's fat arm lay beneath the rubble. She drew her foot away and kept walking.

Homura heard a voice break through the silence.

"Do you really feel nothing, Homura Akemi? Shouldn't this witch's labyrinth make you frightened? Angry?"

She whirled around, recognizing the voice, though the words were nothing she'd ever say.

"Ma—" 

The creature had Madoka's voice and her face, or at least what she could see behind the mask, but everything behind the mask was all wrong. The smile was pulled taut, as if her mouth was held open with wire.

"Witches don't exist anymore," Homura said.

"But if you built your life on Madoka, what is left? What then? Everything you wished for was her. And now—"

Before the weakness could take hold again, Homura gripped her gun. She'd used up most of her ammo in the first fight, but that didn't stop her now. She fired right at the throat of the impostor.

The mask broke from the face, and she stared into was her own. Innocence rotting into coldness, a dark sneer that broke into pieces with a second shot.

Homura whirled around, gun leveled at the sound. The blood from the broken specter of herself dripped into the wasteland. The ground glowed red, and in seconds it was a field of spider lilies.

From all the timelines sprung girls who she could've been, girls who she was but shed away. They turned on each other, gunfire and fright, fury and coldness. Homura watched herself die over and over, braids pulled loose, broken glasses and bloodied hair. Gunfire and dying groans.

_What I hate the most is.....Not Kyubey, not the world. What I hate the most is...._

The specter was back, floating just above her.

_What I hate the most is...._

_Is..._

"Did you ever stop to think that maybe you've become a heartless machine?"

The specter's skin peeled off, revealing a skull of metal and clockwork. And yet, it still dared talk with Madoka's voice.

She lifted up the gun, her hand trembling now.

"In the end, without Madoka—" The specter broke off.

Every version of herself lifted up, even the dead and dying rose up. It was their voice that finished for the specter. Thousands of her spoke that one, damning sentence:

_"You are nothing."_

Jawless, wordless, blood seeping out of holes they walked towards her. Broken promises, broken timelines, broken down bodies. Wound up again, scars healed on to a hopeless battle over and over and over.

They advanced on her. Their wounds seeped red and black. She reached through time for a machine gun and began to kill herself by degrees. Innocence, coldness, failure all fell. She shuddered as they were mowed down. A hand was in the rubble— hers, but another her. She was in pieces, dissembled and reassembled at will.

_"I'll keep fighting for her, even if it kills me, even if she never comes back—!"_

Her voice broke at this. She forced herself on, even as more of her failures came to haunt her. Her finger twitched on the trigger as she watched her agony over and over. Each death was a single word repeated again and again and again:

 _Madoka_.

She would go on, she would go on until, until— 

The red lilies broke into flames, the soulless versions of her lost in the smoke. The specter smirked as the flames created a circle around her, burning through the floor. She fell through again, deeper into the labyrinth.

At each window, versions of her looked in. The youngest her, when witches and magical girls were merely things of stories, meeting Madoka for the first time, killing her the first time. She saw ghostly visions of herself, smoke and bone, bloodied hands leaving red smears against the glass as empty eyes stared at nothing. 

Colors bled and dripped as time wound itself free, purple threads surrounding her, choking her. Homura could only cheat death for so long before it caught up with her. Homura saw the girl she once was slowly unfurling from coldness and metal, all the way to that very first meeting. The mirror visions of Homura had twisted bodies and twisted faces. Grimaces and smiles, bone white in the black light. Each lost timeline collapsed in on itself, broken promises and littered bodies of all the times she couldn't save Madoka.

Snowflakes of ash and flame floated down around her as she fell to the final, frozen prison. Caught in the ice were the lifeless bodies of all the magical girls she had let die in the quest to save Madoka. She stepped past them, past their wounds and tragedies and unseeing eyes.

From all the dead girls, a single flower sprung up. A large blood red spider lily bloomed out spider webs and a witch's hat. Purple dark stars cascaded over the cold room, opening up to the heart of a witch's labyrinth.

Her hat was pulled down over her eyes. On her chest was a purple hourglass filled with sand and stars of a deep, dark space that even in her witch form, she couldn't reach.

"No....she destroyed all witches. It—It couldn't have been for nothing!"

"Now do you understand...Homura Akemi?" the specter said.

It wore a Kyubey mask now, though it still talked with Madoka's voice. The clockwork mouth moved. Homura kept shaking her head, drawing away inch by inch.

"I-I won't accept it! Her wish wasn't for nothing, _it–it couldn't be!_ "

Purple lines criss-crossed over the world, drawing it deep into the witch's world. As Homura reached out, the lines dug deeper. Barbed wire strung in acid, bitterness so palatable that she could taste it, metallic in her mouth. Just a hint of pink on the horizon, but it was just a sunrise, a sunset, another girl's dress who was nothing like the girl Homura had built her life around.

The witch had a red ribbon tied around her wrist.

She'd lied. Each shot to the heart to the girls she'd been was an ache in her own body. And even now as she shot at the witch, she felt the depth of the agony that had drowned her. She struggled to breathe as the cold cut deep into the marrow of her very bones.

"I can't.....let Madoka down. I'll keep.....fighting...."

Her Soul Gem was black and drowning in stars. The airless cold of space had swallowed her, and even then, she couldn't see Madoka. She couldn't see.

She fired as the cold washed over her, consumed her. She reached and kicked and fought past the pain which overwhelmed her. Nothingness and anger and pain blotted out into nothing.

There was a humming in her head as the witch spoke words. Even as she couldn't understand the garbled language, Homura understood the anguish behind them.

All along, the wraith that had hunted Homura had been herself all along. The specter was crying tears of blood and oil. The witch cried tears of stars and ash. The ground was covered with bodies of herself. She stepped over dismembered what-ifs, her own blood, her own bodies squishing under every step. Every failure and left body of her broke down, and she felt pain in her head wiping out every memory, every word and breath.

Only one thing remained: a ribbon tied to her wrist. She could turn back time like winding a clock over and over, but she couldn't outrun herself. The more she turned back time, the further away Madoka was, the stronger her witch self would become. She couldn't go backwards or forwards. Time had come to a slow. Time was not endless, and neither was she.

"Madoka...."

It echoed through a metallic voice, a wordless cry. The desperate plea of thousands of her, dead and gone and buried and sewn back up like cast aside dolls.

Through the dark was the beginnings of a brightness. An arrow of light shone through the witch's cloaks. Soaring through the air, it landed near her foot.

Madoka was so changed from the girl she had known. Gold eyes and a goddess's demeanor of kindness–the same kindness that made her sign the contract to save a cat so many timeline's ago. Wings closed about her body. Homura could see an aura of stars. Skin and softness, a touch turned corporeal as the ghost god of Madoka surrounded her.

_"You've been fighting for so long."_

Worlds and wishes faded away at Madoka's touch. A pain ripped through her, skin breaking and a new burnt scent. She clung to Madoka through the coldness of space, through the agony of remaking. Already deep inside her, she could feel the blackened char pain spreading. 

"—It's too late. I'm already—"

Time wouldn't save her. All the darkness in her Soul Gem had rotted it unseen until she was this. Blood dripped down her back as she gasped for breath in the bubble that Madoka had created her. The cosmos bent around her, stretching from the weight of her hurt.

_"It's never too late. You're the one who taught me that, Homura-chan. And I won't give up on you, just like you wouldn't give up on me."_

She felt a soft hand to her neck, pulling her free. The threads that had bound both her stuck fast, but with a ring of light, Madoka snipped each one. She petted her hair. In the reflection of her mind, she saw hundreds of herself pieced back together and held tight. A witch's hat dropped as the swirling chaos was healed.

Madoka had calmed the witch growing within her, so subtle in the jealousy, the loss of innocence and desperation, that she hadn't even noticed it. 

Something had rotted through her, twisting away the girl Madoka had once befriended. Madoka stroked her cheek, even as the last of the twisted black feelings sprung out from her. Madoka was born out of love, but she had been born out of a ache so intense that the cosmos had shattered around her. She clung tighter to Madoka, the one person she had never stopped believing. Even as she hated the world, everyone else inside it, herself. 

White robes fluttered against her cheek. Could Madoka see what the Soul Gem hid, a patchwork of sewn scars and fracture lines across her skin, what was left of her soul?

"Everything I did, was for nothing—"

 _"No."_ Madoka touched her finger to Homura's lips.

 

"But, no one else remembers you! You gave up everything for people who don't even know your name! You— _You're gone_."

_"I gave it up for you, too."_

"You didn't have to give it up! You could've stayed, you could've—"

For what? A endless cycle of anguish? To die or become a witch, to survive on the deaths of other magical girls. She tried to pull herself together, past the weakness which threatened to overflow. Madoka was her weakest and strongest point all in one.

"You could've....." Homura said barely above a whisper this time.

_"Trust me, Homura-chan. The night isn't over yet, but soon, we'll be together again. And then we'll never be parted. You just have to wait a little longer..."_

White receded. Even as she clung, Madoka became fainter and fainter until she was nothing more than a memory. She awoke on the cold ground, guns and spent cartridges lain all about her.  
There was another ribbon about her other wrist.

_I saved her. At least, that–_

Before the voice of the specter, that devil with Madoka's voice could speak, could speak, she heard a soft voice inside her: _You worked hard. You truly are my best friend. You are important to me._

She clung to that warmth, that ray of borrowed hope glowing within her.

Homura walked on until the trees thinned, revealing the last stars of a long night. The sunrise glowed pink over the gray of a new morning. The pressure of the ribbons about her wrists reminded her to try and believe.


End file.
